"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
Fred Barnard
1878
13.8 x 10.7 cm
Dickens's Christmas Books, A Christmas Carol, "Stave One: Marley's Ghost."
Details
Barnard's second Christmas Carol Illustration: "It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?" (p. 1)
Barnard's purpose here is to reinforce the text's characterisation of Scrooge's emotionally barren relationship with his clerk, Bob Cratchit so that his transformation from Malthusian miser on Christmas Eve to ebullient philanthropist on Christmas morning will seem all that more marvellous. Barnard prepares us for the ensuing fantasy by grounding us in Scrooge's workaday reality, which focuses around the miser's obsession with keeping costs down, whether the specific issue be the excessive consumption of coal or the inconvenience of shutting down the counting-house for Christmas Day. The interior illustration, with its extensive caption, pinpoints the cause of Scrooge's ill-humour as he departs at closing time. Scrooge's money morality, then, is presented in stark contrast to the frontispiece's exterior scene dramatising the companionship of father and son: the Bob Cratchit of the second scene, still recognisable by his extended comforter, cowed and submissive before his irascible employer, is a far cry from the man happily serving as his son's beast of burden in a spirit of play rather than out of capitalistic necessity.
Two illustrations of Scrooge's mundane reality by American artist Sol Eytinge, Jr. (1868). Left: "Vignette for Stave One". Right: "In the Tank." (Stave One).
The three-quarter-page woodcut precedes the moment realised, and, indeed, coincides with the textual introduction of Ebenezer Scrooge himself as Marley's legatee, so that the illustration typifies Scrooge's key identity after the loss of his friend and partner, that of businessman and employer. Warmly dressed and ready even for the eventuality of rain despite the cold temperatures, Scrooge lectures Bob about the necessity for economy, preventing him from joining his family on Christmas Eve. The snuffed out candle behind Scrooge may well suggest not merely closing time but the end of life, the smoke being the ghost of the candle's flame. Bob's clothing and demeanour contrast those of his employer, for he has no overcoat but carries a high-crowned beaver. Barnard well describes Bob's discomfort by his glazed expression and bent left leg, implying a shifting rather than a solid stance; although he is adept at hiding his true emotions from his dour employer, he is already thinking of the walk home and the family that awaits him. Despite the lateness of the day and the time of the year, light still floods across the desk of Bob Cratchit's tank, imparting a luminosity to his form.
Closing time has nonetheless arrived. Scrooge's nephew Fred and the charity collectors having paid their calls to the Tank (the outer office of the counting-house), Scrooge has refused to acknowledge their message of seasonal compassion and concern for one's fellow passengers to the grave. Now comes the moment realised in the woodcut:
At length the hour of shutting up the countinghouse arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning." [Stave One, Household Edition, p. 5]
Already Scrooge seems to "growl" at Bob, whose white comforter is not quite long enough here, if we credit Dickens's description of it "dangling below his waist" (although it is somewhat longer in the frontispiece, where Bob looks much more manly and vigorous). In that first illustration, the lack of a "great-coat" is suitable to a young father playing with his son and consistent with the subsequent image of Bob's sliding down Cornhill with "a lane of boys, twenty times." The reduced length of the scarf in the second illustration may therefore imply Bob's feelings of emasculation under Scrooge's penetrating gaze. There is no parallel to this illustration in Leech's original sequence of eight, but Sol Eytinge, Jr., in the 1868 text published by Ticknor and Field, Boston, realises the office and the clerk in "The Tank", and the sour-faced employer pausing momentarily at the door of his counting-house, as if contemplating with something less than relish the reader perusing him, in "Scrooge and Marley's," vignette for "Stave I. Marley's Ghost," wood engravings which, taken together, parallel the exterior/interior and man/master dichotomies of Barnard's first two illustrations.
References
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
Cook, James. Bibliography of the Writings of Dickens. London: Frank Kerslake, 1879. As given in the Publishers' Circular The English Catalogue of Books.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol — A Ghost Story of Christmas. Il. Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Il. Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Il. John Leech. Charles Dickens: The Christmas Books. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1971. Rpt., 1978. Vol. 1: 38-134.
Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book, 1912.
Kitton, Frederic G. Dickens and His Illustrators. 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: U. Press of the Pacific, 2004.
Patten, Robert L. Charles Dickens and His Publishers. University of California at Santa Cruz.: The Dickens Project, 1991. Rpt. from Oxford U. p., 1978.
Last modified 16 May 2012